Category Archives: Blogging Challenge

Looking for a creative way to spice up your class blog? Follow these simple steps to embed a Google Slide show to introduce your class.

STEP 1: Give your students a template

Click HERE to get your own copy. Share this template with you students. I use Google Classroom and allow my students to “edit” the presentation. Each student has a number, and they are only allowed to work on that assigned number. Are there hiccups? Of course! Sometimes slides get deleted or backgrounds get changed. It’s a risk that we are willing to take, and we learn a lot in the process. Here’s a tutorial by Alice Keeler.

PLAN B: If that seems too risky for your class, try option 2. It’s a little more time consuming on the teacher’s part, but just as effective. Instead of giving the whole class access to edit the entire presentation, just share one slide with them via Google Classroom and merge all of them together in the end. Whoalah! (It’s always best to give them a template to start).

Tip: My class always uploads a screenshot of the avatar. That way we don’t need to bother with downloading and uploading from the sites. That can get tricky.

STEP 2: Create a title slide

You will notice that I have the title slide at the end of the template presentation. There is a reason for this! My students each have a number that they identify with all year long (1-30; depending on the number of students I have). If number 1 starts working on “slide 1” then that cannot be the title slide. (I’m expecting a light bulb moment now.) Before you post your Google Slideshow, just click on the title slide (last position) and drag it to the top! Boom!

STEP 3: Post presentation to blog

It’s time to share our masterpiece! The cool thing about this is that students can continue to edit and finish their slides even after it is posted on your blog. Follow these steps to introduce your class!

In Google Slides:

Go to File, and “publish to the web…”

Click “Embed” next to “Link”

Choose a slide size (I like medium) Here’s what my settings look like

Click “Publish

Highlight and copy the embedded text

Now head on over to your blog!

On your blogging platform, you will want to {paste} this embedded code when inserting media. Here’s a quick tutorial if you are using Edublogs as your platform. If your are using a different blogging platform, please check with the relevant help guide.

Let’s play the “Zoom Out” game! It’s fun, easy, and collaborative! Just take a look at the picture below. What do you think is happening around this fella? How did he get there? What challenges might he face? I just need one commenter to get the story going, and the rest of us will continue to add ONE comment until his story is told. Just follow these simple guidelines to contribute to our mysterious story:

First commenter starts the story in the comments below by writing one sentence (include subject in photo).

The next commenter copies the sentence, pastes it in their comment, and adds onto the story by writing the next thing they would see if the picture was “Zoomed Out.”

We are so excited to participate in the Student Blogging Challenge. We call ourselves, “The Challengers” from Room 30, so naturally we would jump on the opportunity to learn something new! Since you’re already here, feel free to click on some student blogs (located on the right) and check out our first posts! Thanks for visiting!

How do you challenge yourself with your learning? Please comment below.

Have you ever thought about where your photos come from when you search the web? If not, you should. There are many pictures that are floating around out there that are not allowed to be used even for classroom projects. Our class is participating in the Student Blogging Challenge, and we are learning how to search for photos and give them the proper attribution. Click on the hyperlinks to find out how you can use and post photos properly.

We have been practicing using photos in our blog posts and giving the proper attribution (photo credit). Can you READ the following pictures and guess my idiom?

If you think you have an idea, leave a comment below. We’d love for you to create one and challenge us! Don’t forget to leave a link to your post in the comments.

My class and I read, The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. While reading the book, we discussed such topics as point of view, author’s voice, and evidence that supports a claim. We decided that we should write our own letters from objects in our lives that have been misused or mistreated. Here’s an example:

Dear Mrs. Vazquez,

Hello? I mean…is anyone there? Seriously! I’ve been sitting on the shelf next to your “Mrs. Vazquez’ Hot Read” sign for weeks now. Some “HOT” read. You haven’t picked me up in forEVER! I thought we had something. I thought we had a connection. We were spending lots of time together…day after day, page after page. Where’d you go? Did leave me for another? I’m not going to wait around until you’re ready! There are other hands to be filled. I was anxiously waiting to fell you what happened to Paul, but you never came back. I’m sorry if I was boring you with Eric’s story, but if you come back I promise to show you some conflict. Please give me a second chance. I will make it up to you.

We are so excited to announce that one of our students was nominated for the “Best Student Blog 2014.” Congratulations to Mateo for your hard work and dedication to keeping up your blog and making connections. To visit Mateo’s blog, please click here!

If you’d like to vote for his blog, click HERE to use Polldaddy. Remember you can vote once per day!

You can also vote HERE using List.Ly. Don’t forget to like Mateo’s Blog by clicking the “Thumbs Up” symbol.

Room One has been learning about our Digital Footprints (also known as our Digital Dossier). As active participants in the Student Blogging Challenge, we were encouraged to discover how our footprint can leave a positive or negative impression. Here is what we have discovered so far…

Have you ever wondered how many OREOS you can stack? Our class participated in the O.R.E.O project. In the OREO project, you have two chances to stack the tallest tower you can before it falls down. We wrote a hypothesis and estimated that we could stack about 20 OREOS before the tower collapsed. When we were finished, we analyzed the data and found the class mean or average. After crunching the data, we discovered that our class mean was exactly20. Crazy, right?

Creating a Hypothesis

Gathering Data

Finding the Group Mean

Analyzing More Data

Our top stacker was Marcia. She was able to stack 26 OREOS before her tower came crashing down. But what really surprised us was our Kinder Buddies. Later that afternoon, we visited our Kinder friends and supported them in the OREO challenge. One girl was able to match our maximum stacker by creating an OREO tower 26 cookies tall. Take a look at the action by watching our slideshow.

Oreo Stacking by Room One on PhotoPeach

After we were finished stacking OREOS and crunching data, we carefully scraped out the oreo guts and used them to make sculptures. The students had so much fun and made some pretty awesome sculptures. Take a look at our OREO gallery by viewing the slideshow…

Oreo Sculptures on PhotoPeach

In the end, I challenged the whole class to learn the OREOhand game by the end of the week. Most students took the bait and was able to complete the challenge. As a matter of fact, they are still perfecting it while standing in line at lunch and after recess. They are even teaching students from other classes and family members at home.

Has your class ever participated in a challenge like this? Would you like to participate in a challenge with our class? If so, please comment below and share your ideas!

We did it! We signed up for the Student Blogging Challenge! Each week we will have a new task to complete as participants of the challenge. This week the challenge was to create or update an “About Me” page on our blogs. Since many of the students had already accomplished this task, it gave us an opportunity to edit, revise, and evaluate our About Me pages.

The students used an app from the Google Store called My World to add interest to their page. They created their world, took a screenshot, and then described it on their About Me page. Not only does this app allow you to drag items into the canvas that describe you and your personaility, but it also analyzes these items and gives the creator some feedback regarding their interests. The program tells you the type of person you are and suggests some fields of study for when you attend college. We had fun using this app!

Here’s an example:

The World of Vazquez

Please click on our Student Blogs located on the right-hand side of the page to view some of the About Me pages created by the students. Look for the “About Me” tab located on the top of their Home Page.

Have you created an About Me page? If so, what web tools have you used to make your page interesting?